Closed school to host vaccination clinic
Silverthorn Collegiate Institute first in city to shut its doors this fall
A vaccine clinic is being set up this week at Silverthorn Collegiate Institute, the Etobicoke high school currently closed due to a COVID-19 outbreak.
The clinic is open to the community and will be run out of the school cafeteria on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, with an additional three days planned for next week, according to the school board.
On Monday evening, Toronto Public Health said it was investigating 11 cases among students at the Mill Road school and dismissed all in-person classes, making it the first Toronto school to close this academic year.
As of Wednesday, there were seven active cases there, while four had resolved.
Dr. Eileen de Villa, Toronto’s medical officer of health, said at a media briefing on Tuesday that nine of the 11 cases at Silverthorn “are linked to student-to-student transmission” and that “several” had been newly reported last weekend.
“We have also found that there was potential transmission at multi-grade events, activities and social gatherings, inside and outside of the school,” she said, adding wholeschool testing is recommended. “We will continue to investigate and make recommendations to return to in-person classes and activities as soon as possible.”
She noted that current vaccine coverage for eligible youth in this community is between 70 to 75 per cent, saying “vaccination, along with measures of personal protection, are the best tools at our disposal to protect ourselves, our families, our communities.”
The first active COVID-19 case in the school was reported on Oct. 4, with some students in Grade 11 being asked to self-isolate at home. Over the following days, more cases surfaced and more students in Grade 11 were told to self-isolate.
Over Thanksgiving weekend, the number of cases ticked higher and public health officials made the decision on Monday to close the entire school to in-person learning.
While a number of students had already been learning remotely as a result of the previous cases, when the board learned on Monday afternoon that the remainder of students would be dismissed, staff had to act quickly to get the word out to families.
“Teachers began reaching out to students Monday night and into Tuesday morning to provide information on next steps,” said Toronto District School Board spokesperson Ryan Bird.
“As classes have remote learning platforms already set up, the switch to remote learning could be made relatively quickly.”
He said there were at least six requests for laptops from students and that devices were distributed on Tuesday morning prior to classes starting.
It’s unclear how many students at the school are fully vaccinated, since the board only began collecting this voluntary information last week, and doesn’t yet have reliable data.
According to TPH, there were 18 active outbreaks in Toronto schools on Wednesday. One of them is at Millwood Junior School, which is about a fiveminute walk from Silverthorn. According to Ontario, an outbreak in a school is when two or more have tested positive for COVID-19 and are linked in the school, child-care setting, day camp, bus or after-school setting, over a 14-day period.